


In Another Life

by alocalband



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (in a manner of speaking), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23662171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alocalband/pseuds/alocalband
Summary: Dex goes to bed his first night in the basement and wakes up in a slightly altered version of reality for the day.A few nights later, it happens again. And again. And again...Which is fine. Really. He will handle this insanity the same way he’s handled every other weirdness Samwell has thrown at him since he got here.He’s just not sure how to deal with the implications of how often he wakes up in worlds where Nursey is in bed beside him.
Relationships: Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter
Comments: 76
Kudos: 715
Collections: Going Out With A Big Bang 2020





	In Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to @shadowfaerieammy for the absolutely beautiful (and heartbreaking) artwork that you can find [here.](https://shadowfaerieammy.tumblr.com/post/615440639882067968/here-is-one-of-my-art-submissions-for)

It takes a full day, as well as the help of an exasperated Chowder, but Dex manages to get all of his stuff moved down to the basement before bed. 

“If you guys would just communicate—“ Chowder tries halfheartedly as they lug boxes downstairs.

“I did communicate,” Dex interrupts. “And now I’m communicating that I’m moving out.”

“You have every right to be annoyed about the lack of, like, self-awareness on his part. But the guy broke his arm, and—”

“And I’m pissed about that too,” Dex breaks in again. He’s still red-faced, and it’s only half from the exertion of the move. The other half is residual frustration with his now former roommate.

“You’re angry he broke his arm?!” Chowder squawks, indignant.

“He wasn’t even on the ice when it happened! And I was standing right there, C, I could’ve— I should’ve—” He cuts himself off with a frustrated grunt. 

Chowder gets a knowing look on his face then, though it’s no less exasperated by the entire situation. “So you’re really just angry at yourself for not preventing it.”

Dex makes a noise that doesn’t exactly confirm or deny that statement. And then he mutters unhappily, “I usually manage to catch him.”

But he didn’t this time. What’s done is done. 

And now he’s getting his own room. 

Sort of. There’s some major construction that he’s gonna have to go through before it looks livable. A partition, at least for tonight, should suffice, separating the section of the place he’s claimed for himself and the section containing the washer/dryer, the water heater, and the Haus bylaws. But he’s got a good week or two of work after that before the place will be to his liking.

He works on it through dinner, and Bitty brings him a sandwich that he distractedly eats one handed while measuring boards with the other. 

By the time he’s done, it’s late enough and he’s exhausted enough that he figures sleep will hit him hard. So he sets an alarm on his phone so he won’t miss practice and passes out in the slightly too cold and too damp Haus basement that he now calls home.

He wakes up back in the room upstairs. 

Nothing registers as out of the ordinary at first. He blearily reaches over to silence his alarm like he has every morning since moving into the Haus. And, like every morning, he sits up and stretches with a yawn, his knuckles brushing the ceiling above him.

It hits him a comedically long beat later: he’s back in his bunk. 

Not even _his_ bunk, but _Nursey’s_. How the hell...

Obviously Dex’s friends are all assholes.

He ducks his head over the side of the bed to see Nursey sleeping soundly in the bunk below his. He drops down onto the floor as loudly as he can, because Nursey deserves it for this.

“Wha—?” Nursey mutters, half awake and rubbing a hand over the pillow creases on his cheeks. 

“You’re an asshole,” Dex tells him, already heading for the door.

Nursey frowns, looking more confused than offended. “What did I—“

“I don’t know how you pulled it off without waking me up, but it’s not funny, Nurse. I’m not sharing this room with you anymore. I’m fucking done.”

Dex only catches a glimpse of Nursey’s reaction before he’s out the door, though it looks equal parts dumbstruck and absolutely gutted. There’s a minuscule amount of guilt in Dex at that, but the anger still simmering in him easily overpowers it.

Downstairs, Farmer is helping Chowder make french toast, which is unusual but not out of the realm of possibility. She does stay over fairly often, though usually not on a night when they have practice the next day. 

Dex immediately suspects her as being involved in this stupid prank as much as he suspects Chowder. And also Ollie and Wicky, who are nursing cups of coffee while sitting on the floor facing the kitchen, their backs against the back of the couch.

Dex is a light sleeper. How any of these jerks managed to get him all the way upstairs and back in his former bed without waking him is a mystery. But obviously it happened, and he’s pretty fucking pissed at all of them.

“Hey Dex!” Chowder greets him cheerily. Dex scowls back at him, but it goes unnoticed. “Where’s Nursey?”

“Back in his room. Which, by the way, I would appreciate if you guys would remember is his room. Not mine. I’m not sleeping there anymore and you all are dicks for pulling this shit.”

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that follows this. And it isn’t until Farmer hisses an expletive under her breath and elbows Chowder so he’ll flip a burning piece of toast that sound returns.

“Bro, what happened?” Ollie asks, his expression genuinely concerned, at the same time as Wicky asks, “Did you guys fight?”

Dex ignores them and marches himself towards the basement so he can get dressed and try to calm down enough not to murder any of his teammates.

The basement is empty.

Well, not empty. The washer and dryer are still there. The water heater. The by-laws. A few boxes of holiday decorations and old hockey gear. None of Dex’s stuff though. Like, nothing. Not even the partition he made.

How the hell did these idiots get the partition taken down without injuring at least three of them?

This can’t be right. Dex is going insane. He feels all the anger drain out of him as it’s replaced by confusion and queasy helplessness. 

He goes back upstairs to the kitchen and looks at everyone. Everyone stares right back at him. “Where’s my stuff?” he asks weakly. He means for it to sound as furious as it did just a minute ago, but he’s at a loss. What the hell is going on?

Chowder opens his mouth to say something, but then shuts it abruptly when Nursey appears in the doorway. He’s disheveled, but dressed now, and the expression on his face is carefully arranged so it doesn’t reveal any emotion beneath the mask of chill. It’s a standard tactic he uses, that he must not realize gives away more than it hides. Because he only ever pulls out the “I don’t give a shit” face when he very much does give a shit.

“Poindexter,” he says. And then swallows. “Did I talk in my sleep or something? Because you are def crabby most mornings, but usually not thermonuclear.”

Dex doesn’t know how to respond, desperately grasping at straws in his head to keep his fragile hold on reality. “Where’s my stuff?” he asks again, barely above a whisper. 

“Back in our room,” Nursey says slowly, and then he clears his throat and shuffles his feet, trying so hard to look casual it’s a little painful. “Or, well, not our room? You said something about moving out?”

Maybe Dex hallucinated all of yesterday? Or dreamt it? But then something catches his eyes and he can feel the blood drain from his face. “Nurse,” he says, voice gone hoarse and winded. “What happened to your cast?”

Nursey’s eyebrows furrow inward. “My what?”

Dex feels faint. “...I think I need to sit down.”

Chowder is already pulling a chair out from the table and Dex falls down onto it like deadweight. For a long moment he just stares at the floor in front him, trying to get his brain to make sense of everything. The others thankfully give him his space, though Ollie and Wicky are now up off the floor and hovering in the background.

“You fractured your arm,” Dex finally says to the floor, and then looks up at a very worried Nursey. A Nursey so worried he’s apparently stopped trying to hide the fact. “Getting off the ice. In the game against Brown.”

Nursey’s frown gets frownier. “I mean, I almost broke my neck when the door to the bench swung open, but you pulled me back, remember? Bro, when was the last time I was seriously injured when you were around to freaking break my fall, right?”

Is Dex being It’s a Wonderful Life’d right now? What the fuck.

Dex shakes his head, trying to clear it enough to make sense of things. 

“...Guys?” Farmer breaks in gently. “Should we be, like, having him go through concussion protocol or...?”

“No, no, I haven’t hit my head I swear.” Everyone looks pretty skeptical at that, and maybe they have a point. But Dex honestly does feel fine physically, and if he’s forced to miss too many games it’ll effect his scholarship. “I feel fine. Really. I just slept weird. Strange dreams.”

To prove his point he stands up and offers a hopefully reassuring smile. 

Farmer bites her lip, but returns to making breakfast. Chowder narrows skeptical eyes and points a finger at him. “If you’re still being weird at the end of the day, we’re talking to the coaches.”

Dex raises his hands in acquiescence and nods. Even though he’s going to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. 

It should maybe concern him that his scholarship takes higher priority than his own health and sanity, but that’s just who he is.

With as much faked confidence and normalcy as he can muster, Dex goes back upstairs to get dressed. 

Nursey follows him, and Dex doesn’t know what to make of that so he just ignores it.

He can feel Nursey watching him as he changes. And then, when Dex turns around, there Nursey is, barely a couple inches away from him.

And then Nursey is hugging him. 

“I really hope you’re okay, man,” he whispers into the hair behind Dex’s ear, his chin tucked over Dex’s shoulder.

Dex awkwardly pats Nursey’s back a couple times, even though this is definitely not that kind of hug. It’s the kind of hug Dex has rarely had in his life, but he can’t bring himself to sink into it now. Instead, letting his arms fall down to his sides and standing there stiffly until Nursey pulls away with yet another frown.

This is a specific frown though. One that radiates both embarrassment and confusion. “God. You’re really out of it, huh?”

Dex shrugs awkwardly.

Nursey looks like he wants to push the issue, but bites his tongue. Which is one of the weirdest parts of this morning so far, to be honest. Nursey never holds back when it comes to Dex.

The rest of the day is just as odd, in small ways that keep tripping Dex up, but that he doesn’t know how to explain to anyone without sounding like he’s gone off the rails.

Whiskey is holding hands with some guy Dex doesn’t recognize at team breakfast, and no one on the team bats an eye. Farmer mentions soccer practice when she leaves them after lunch. The hockey group chat has two more members than he knows it’s supposed to. And Dex is pretty sure Faber was on the other side of the quad yesterday, but at this point he’s too turned around to know for sure.

Somehow he makes it through while managing to attract a minimum of concerned looks from the team. Though Nursey and Chowder do enough of it themselves to make up for it. 

They both watch him closely the entire day, and Dex can feel their eyes narrow every time he hesitates over something that, in his own head, he’s certain was slightly different just twenty-four hours ago.

It’s not until Dex is in bed that night, back in the top bunk of his somehow still shared room because Nursey took the bottom one again, like it really does belong to him, that he lets himself have a minor panic attack over the whole thing. Whatever’s going on, he’s officially rattled, and he’s not sure what else he can do except play along and pretend this is all normal.

The room is dark and Dex thinks Nursey is asleep when he hears a soft, “Seriously, bro. If you’re still feeling like this tomorrow we gotta go to a doctor. Okay?”

It’s a reasonable request, but Dex still hesitates. “...Yeah, alright.” He’s not sure if he means it or not. If he can somehow see a doctor without the coaches finding out, maybe...

“Promise?”

“Nursey—”

“ _Promise,_ Dex. I’m not letting anything happen to you.”

Dex’s breath hitches. He swallows around a lump in his throat. Nursey’s never this serious in front of him. “Okay. Promise.”

He means it in the moment, at least, which is apparently enough to satisfy Nursey.

Sleep comes slowly. Nursey’s steady breaths, not quite a snore but still loud in the quiet room, are oddly grounding. Dex may find the guy infuriating, but he’s so familiar with him now that even the most annoying things about Nursey still make Dex feel at home. Not more or less so than he does back home in Maine, but... in a different way.

Sleep finally takes him just as he’s trying to imagine if Nursey were to feel the same way.

***

When Dex wakes up, he’s back in the basement. 

***

The entire day goes by exactly as he was expecting it to originally. As if no time has passed and as if Dex never hallucinated himself into a reality in which he and Nursey still roomed together.

The partition is still there, Dex’s stuff is all still where he left it, half unpacked. Chowder is still a hockey player sized ball of exasperation over the whole situation. 

Nursey has taken to expertly giving Dex the cold shoulder while pretending he doesn’t care enough to bother with the cold shoulder. He loudly pokes fun at Dex’s meltdown the previous day with some of the other guys at practice, and never lets his gaze stray to where Dex is taping his stick and can obviously hear them.

“Yeah, it looks like you guys are communicating fantastically,” Chowder comments with exaggerated sarcasm from where he’s reaching behind the boards for a gatorade bottle.

Nursey is laughing loudly with Louis and Tango a few feet down the ice. It’s a mean sound, for how joyful it should be.

“If we’re not living together anymore, what does it even matter?” Dex mutters

“It matters because you’re supposed to be friends.”

Dex shrugs, the gesture looking too big with all his gear on for how small he feels as he does it. “We play hockey together. That doesn’t automatically makes us friends.”

“Well you were friends anyway. I know you were. I’ve seen how you used to look at him when you thought no one—”

Dex slams his roll of tape down on the bench loudly to interrupt wherever Chowder was going with that. He’s never looked at Nursey like anything other than a nuisance that he kept getting partnered with on the ice. Chowder is being ridiculous.

“It’ll be fine. We can still play together,” Dex tells him. And it’s true that they’ve always been able to find that special kind of chemistry on the ice even when they’ve been in the middle of their biggest fights.

Okay, so this time feels a little different than it has in the past. But Dex isn’t going to admit it. 

“Yeah, but... Will...” Dex’s gaze snaps up to Chowder’s worried expression at the use of his first name. It’s the least frustrated Chowder’s looked the past two days. He looks almost... sad.

But he doesn’t continue, and whatever he was going to say seems to get erased as Bully and Wicky start playfully wrestling right beside them, breaking up the moment.

“Yo, C!” Nursey calls over. “Come on, I got a bucket of pucks with your name on it.”

Chowder glances at Dex, who just shakes his head. Chowder sighs, and then turns and starts skating towards the goal. “And I’ve got a .98 save percentage on all your best shots,“ he chirps back.

The day is long and filled with a tension that has Dex unable to eat much or concentrate on his classes. He spends all his spare time working on his new room, but even the usually calming act of working with his hands doesn’t help.

The memories of whatever strange and highly realistic dream he had last night certainly don’t help either. But as the reality around him further proves that he’s not going crazy, everything is how it should be, the memories become easier and easier to shove to the back of his mind.

***

A week later, it happens again.

At first, he thinks it’s another dream. 

There’s sunlight streaming through the window, and a familiar bookshelf to his right. He’s back in the room he shared with Nursey again, but he’s not quite awake enough for it to bother him. And the ceiling isn’t close enough to make him question it. Obviously this is a dream, the angle of that sunlight is entirely wrong for him to be back in his bunk.

Except that’s not the only thing that’s different, he notices as he starts to wake up more. There are several things entirely wrong with this picture.

Number one: he’s currently naked.

Number two: Derek Nurse is fast asleep beside him. And also naked.

Dex nearly falls out of the bed, and only through some miraculous self preservation instinct manages not to flail hard enough to wake Nursey. 

He stares at Nursey’s bare shoulder for a very long time. This no longer feels like a dream. He’s awake enough to know that this is actually happening.

Is it a prank? Like he suspected the last time? But a highly unlikely and elaborate one that he’s not sure he sees the point of. No way could the team have both moved him and undressed him, nor would they. They can be dudebro assholes at times, sure, but they respect boundaries and body autonomy.

Did he sleepwalk? He’s never done it before, but... 

Nursey stirs in his sleep, the blanket falling further down his bare arm and chest. Dex has seen the sight a thousand times in the locker room, but here in bed it’s so much more intimate that Dex immediately blushes.

Which isn’t a reaction to Nursey specifically, of course. Dex doesn’t... He’s not... 

Whatever. Nursey is one of the most beautiful people in the entire state of Massachusetts. _Not_ reacting to that beauty would be weird.

Quietly, Dex slips out of the bed, which is, in and of itself, disorienting. As far as Dex was aware, Nursey still had the bunkbeds up here. Not this single queen tucked into the corner under the window, fairy lights and polaroids scattered on the walls all around it. 

Something is fundamentally wrong with reality and Dex is trying not to go dizzy with it. 

He grabs some clothes from off floor, not caring whether they belong to him or Nursey because either will fit him fine, and he heads out the door and downstairs as silently as creaking floorboards will allow.

In the kitchen, Bitty’s making pancakes and Chowder’s probably contemplating the Sharks most recent loss as he stares into his coffee cup like it might offer some answers. So, business as usual. 

“Honey, would you mind starting the eggs?” Bitty asks over his shoulder.

Dex happily will grab onto the opportunity for normalcy with both hands. He gets the eggs out and another skillet and he sets to work beside his captain. He chops onions and bell peppers and mushrooms and he cracks eggs with practiced ease, and he does not think about how the entire world is completely upside down.

For as many similarities as there are, this is not the reality Dex knows. 

Nevermind how he woke up this morning, which if he even sorta kinda thinks about he feels like he’ll have an aneurysm.

Dex sautes and scrambles and adds cheese, and then suddenly loses all feeling in his limbs as an arm wraps around his waist from behind and a chin rests on his shoulder. 

“That smells delicious,” Nursey’s voice is still rough with sleep, and pitched low as if the words, as innocent as they are, are meant only for Dex. Nursey’s breath tickles his collarbone and Nursey’s nose nuzzles into his neck.

Dex tries not to spontaneously combust. 

And also tries not to act like this is the very last thing, in any reality, he expected to have to deal with.

He fails spectacularly, going so tense he thinks he sprains something. 

But Nursey’s brain must not be fully on line just yet, because he doesn’t act like anything’s wrong. He pulls away from Dex slowly and mumbles a “thank you” as Bitty hands him a cup of coffee.

Dex grabs a platter for the eggs with shaking hands.

Neither Bitty nor Chowder bat an eye at any of this. It’s like this is every other morning for them. 

Nursey yawns and stretches, spilling coffee on his hand as he does, and then goes to join Chowder at the table while licking up the mess.

Which Dex does not blush at the sight of. His cheeks are only burning because he’s about to explode with confusion over what the hell is happening to him. Is this real? Is he going crazy? 

“Food, y’all!” Bitty yells towards nowhere in particular, and immediately four other hockey players descend on the kitchen. Ollie and Wicky from upstairs, Hops and Louis from somewhere Dex doesn’t want to bother figuring out. 

Dex does his best to act as though nothing is off. He doesn’t want to worry anyone, or be forced into admitting to the coaches that he might not be fit to play.

This would be easier to do if Nursey didn’t find every single opportunity to touch him.

Dex would’ve sat on the opposite side of the table from Nursey if he could’ve. But every other spot quickly gets taken, only the chair right beside Nursey left open, like they all know that that’s Dex’s seat. Like it would be absurd for Dex not to sit beside him.

Nursey’s leg presses against his throughout the meal. His fingers keep reaching out to steal bits of Dex’s food, and brushing against Dex’s own every time he does. He throws an arm around the back of Dex’s chair at one point and idly draws patterns on Dex’s shoulder.

It’s... an ordeal.

No one seems to notice how tense Dex is, or how the red in his face is probably still as bright as it was at the start, or how he barely touches his food. Bitty does make an off-hand remark about how quiet Dex is this morning, though.

“Slept funny,” he says, voice a little strangled. He clears his throat and glances sideways at Nursey, who is staring at him with an expression that is far too calm and collected. 

Nursey is not, even at his chillest, by any means “calm” or “collected.” Nursey is a disaster of emotions who sometimes manages to fool people into thinking otherwise by the sheer force of his charm, good looks, and an extremely specific kind of intelligence. The kind that will entirely miss obvious social cues and yet easily pick out random details that no one else can.

The point being, Nursey knows something’s up. And is currently overcompensating in order not to freak out about it.

Dex eventually excuses himself, muttering about getting ready for class, and slinks back upstairs.

Which is where Nursey finds him barely a couple minutes later. All Dex has so far managed to do since entering the room is stand in the middle of it and stare at the rumpled sheets on the single bed.

“You don’t have a class until two,” Nursey says from the doorway. His tone is carefully devoid of any inflection.

Dex keeps his back to him. Clears his throat. Tries not to hyperventilate. “Yeah, I just. I think I’m coming down with something. I didn’t want to worry the guys.”

There’s quiet and Dex wants to believe he’s gotten away with it. But then he hears a soft, “bullshit,” and is turned around gently by a sudden hand on his bicep.

Nursey stares at him, gaze searching. Dex feels like he’s under a microscope that was designed just for him. It’s like Nursey, _this_ Nursey, can see straight through Dex, right down the very core of him. Has a clear view of all those little gears and rationalizations and broken pieces that make up how Dex operates in the world.

“Something’s wrong,” Nursey says, still staring. He says it like he knows that something weird is going on, but that's... not possible. Even Dex has no idea what’s happening to him, or if anything even is happening beyond some vivid dreams or, fuck, maybe he’s in a coma in a hospital somewhere right now, maybe...

“Hey,” Nursey says gently. Too gentle. Dex has never heard his voice sound like that before. “We’ll figure it out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Dex tries, but there’s a lump in his throat and his tongue feels thick.

When Nursey raises a hand to cup his cheek, and Dex flinches away, that basically seals the deal.

Nursey looks freaking devastated. Shit.

“Sorry, I—” Dex takes a step forward and Nursey takes a step back. 

“What’s going on?” Nursey asks lowly. And then, a little desperate, “Did I do something?”

God damn it. This is not a reality Dex knows how to navigate. He can’t fake... _this_.

“No! You didn’t do anything. Absolutely nothing,” he assures, a little frantic, but earnest too. “I’m sorry, Nurse. I’m just out of it. Give it a day and I’ll be back to normal, okay?” At least, he hopes it only takes a day. The last time this happened he was back down in the basement, _his_ basement, by morning.

Nursey frowns at him for a long moment, very obviously hurt and confused. “...You haven’t called me ‘Nurse’ in forever.”

That can’t be true. Dex can’t imagine a universe where he doesn’t still call Nursey by his last name occasionally.

“I...” Dex struggles to find a decent lie. Nothing comes to him. His shoulders slump as he gives up on faking it convincingly. _Just get through day,_ he tells himself, _broken hearts be damned._

And Dex is apparently about to break Derek Nurse’s heart.

Something is intrinsically not right with the universe that this would even be possible.

“I just need some space today,” he says, attempting to soften his words, but he’s never been good at that. “I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with you, I swear. But I need some time to... to process some shit.”

The look on Nursey’s face isn’t any better than the one Dex was fearing he’d get in response to his words. It’s possibly even worse. 

Nursey opens his mouth to say something, but can’t quite manage to find his voice. So he shuts it, nods his head once, and turns around to leave the room.

Dex spends the rest of the day hiding.

Or trying to. He holes up in the library for most of the morning, but then gets caught by Chowder in the quad when he’s on his way to hunt down some food.

“Are you okay?” Chowder asks him, a whisper in the back of their shared lecture. Dex has no idea what the lecture is about, or any memory of signing up for it, but Chowder led him here like it was normal and so he went with it.

“Fine. Why?”

“Just haven’t seen you all day.” He shrugs. And then, while keeping his eyes straight ahead on the professor, adds, “Plus, Nursey’s been weird.”

Dex swallows. “Weird how?”

“Weird like you two aren’t attached at the hip for once and he’s not sure what to do with himself. Should I be worried?”

“No, no, don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.” Though what he really means is that whatever version of Dex that likes being “attached at the hip” with Nursey will hopefully figure it out, and he’ll get to wake up tomorrow back to being comfortably hated and ignored by his own Nursey.

It’s barely a couple minutes later that curiosity gets the better of him. “Hey, Chow? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“How long have Nursey and I been... together?” It’s weird to say it out loud, even though it’s very obviously true. It’s still hard for Dex to wrap his brain around the concept, somehow even more so than the fact that Dex is here in this altered universe in the first place.

“What, did you forget?” Chowder chirps.

“No, I just— I wanted an outsider’s perspective.” The lie is rough, but Chowder accepts it easily. Chowder’s good like that.

“I don’t know, I guess it was building for awhile. All that pigtail pulling, right?” Chowder grins.

Dex sputters. “We do not—”

Chowder laughs. “Well not anymore. Er, mostly. Not since you guys made out at that kegster last year and then admitted all the tension was actually because you wanted to bone.”

Actual words don’t even form in Dex’s mouth at that, just a series of indignant, unrelated syllables.

Chowder laughs some more. “Okay, so there was a lot of awkward miscommunication in between those two events, and basically the most tension filled two weeks of my life, please never do that to me again. Also I think Nursey wrote you a poem or something, so maybe it was bit more heartfelt than just wanting to get in each other’s pants.”

“A poem?” Dex finally manages, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “And I liked it?”

“God no. Or, well, you pretended not to. I think secretly you were swooning, because Nursey was pretty damn proud of himself for, like, a whole entire month.”

None of this sounds like him. Or like Nursey. He can’t even begin to picture... Dex crosses his arms over his chest and leans back a little in his seat. “I did not swoon. I don’t do that.”

“You did your version of it.”

“Whatever,” he grumbles, and turns back to the lecture he’d mostly forgotten about.

Once it’s over, he manages to avoid the rest of his teammates all the way through dinner. But, at the end of the day, he’s not sure where to go. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself by doing something even more out of the ordinary than what he has been. So, after sitting on the gross couch in the living room for a very long time contemplating his options, Dex finally stands and heads upstairs.

He finds Nursey in their room, changed for bed. He’s got loose basketball shorts on and nothing else. Standard, but Dex is hard pressed to think of a worse outfit on Nursey for him to have to deal with right now.

Nursey stares at him, the shirt he just shrugged off still in his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Dex says. And he is sorry. Sorry that he’s hurt Nursey to the extent it appears he has, sorry that he’s in this place to begin with when he just wants everything to go back to normal. Sorry that there is apparently a version of himself that exists somewhere who would know how to handle this Nursey expertly. Who would know how to _swoon_.

Nursey ignores the apology. He tosses the shirt in the hamper and climbs into bed, turning onto his side so that he’s facing away from Dex.

Dex sighs, and then starts to undress.

When they’re both in bed, a good foot of space between them, and the lights are off, he says it again, at a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

It takes a long moment, but then Nursey shifts on the bed so that he’s on his back and staring at the ceiling. “I just don’t understand.”

“I’ll be back to normal in the morning. I promise.” A hell of a thing to promise, considering Dex doesn’t seem to have any control over what’s happening to him.

“I want you to be you now, though. We promised when we started this that we’d always tell each other the important shit, and there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There is,” Dex concedes. “But I’ll figure it out and then you won’t have to worry about it.”

Nursey reaches beneath the blankets for Dex’s hand and squeezes. “I love you,” he says.

Dex swallows. He can’t say it back. He just can’t.

In the wake of his silence, something heavy settles over the room. Nursey lets go of his hand, and turns back away from him to face the wall.

***

When Dex wakes up, he’s back in the basement. The now slightly modified and entirely moved into basement. Where he was expecting to wake up before, but instead...

Dex turns his head to bury his face into his pillow and muffle his frustrated scream. Then he bites down on the insides of his lips to keep them pressed together tightly enough to be painful as he silently coaches himself through not crying.

He doesn’t cry. 

Everything is fine.

Really.

And whatever. He’s been able to make peace with—well, turn a reluctantly blind eye to—pies magically forming in Bitty’s presence even when the ingredients aren’t around, the two regulars at Haus kegsters with very retro fashion-sense probably being the Haus ghosts, and literally everything John Johnson has ever said or done. He can deal with this.

Dex goes to class with Tango. He grabs lunch with Bully. He helps Bitty seal a few dozen more mason jars of jam.

Nursey ignores him. Or pretends to. It probably helps the act that Dex can’t so much as look at him whenever they’re in the same room.

There’s a blush, hot and persistent across the back of Dex’s neck and the apples of his cheeks throughout the day. Bitty sends him periodic worried looks, but Dex just ducks his head and shakes it slightly, and so Bitty doesn’t push. 

The next day is more of the same. And the next. And the next.

It never gets any easier to look at Nursey without seeing his slumbering naked form in bed beside Dex, or hear the words “I love you” said so certainly into the dark.

He wishes it felt like a dream. It was definitely absurd enough to feel like one. 

Instead, it remains vivid in his head, even as Nursey’s over-the-top indifference towards him is like a bucket of cold water over Dex’s continuing blush every time he hazards a quick, secret glance towards him.

Dex earned that indifference, he knows. And besides, it’s not like he isn’t still upset right back at Nursey. It’s just a little harder to remember that fact around the memory of what’s now happened to him on two separate nights now, in two different worlds.

The only time they’re alone together is an accident. Dex is coming out of his finally livable bungalow just as Nursey is reaching the bottom of the basement stairs with a sack of laundry thrown over one shoulder.

They both stop short. Dex wants to turn right back around and slam the bungalow door after him, but he doesn’t want to give Nursey the satisfaction. Plus it would make him late to class. 

“Poindexter,” Nursey says. His lips are attempting a smirk and failing. His expression is hard, but a rather thin version of hard, brittle cracks along the surface.

Dex remembers holding his hand while sharing a bed. He remembers Nursey’s nose brushing against the back of his neck. 

“Nurse,” he says.

Neither of them move. 

“Nice digs,” Nursey finally offers, but in tone of voice like he’s making fun of Dex.

Dex won’t take the bait. “Still need to paint it.”

“Gonna throw a housewarming party after you do? I’ll bring the tub juice.” 

The next words come out automatically. As though all Dex knows how to do anymore is hurt the guy. They come out thoughtless and the kind of barb he and Nursey could carelessly throw back and forth at each other when on good terms but not now, and he immediately regrets them. “Who says you’re invited?”

Nursey was already frozen in place, they both were, but the stillness that descends over him now is sharp and jagged and it hurts Dex to look at. 

Dex shoves his way through it. Nursey almost looks relieved that he wasn’t the one to have to do it. 

“Whatever,” he shrugs as he walks around Nursey, “I have class.”

He’s already halfway up the stairs when he hears a belated, monotone, “Chill,” and then the sounds of the washer door opening.

***

“Nursey still won’t talk about it,” Ford tells him one day on their way to the theater department. Dex has got several pounds of costuming loaded up under each arm, because he’s always the idiot that volunteers to help her carry shit across campus, and then gets wrangled into spending all afternoon as her gopher.

For a split second Dex has no idea what she’s talking about. But then: “What, the fight? He talks about it plenty.”

Dex thinks back to just a few hours ago at team breakfast, when Nursey had regaled the opposite end of the table with tales of moldy pie being the apparent kryptonite for elephant-eared gingers.

“I mean _actually_ talk,” Ford says with a roll of her eyes, as though Dex is being intentionally obtuse.

He really isn’t. He knows how Nursey operates, and this is how the guy has always dealt with their bigger blowouts: Fake a chillness so profound it’s as though Dex doesn’t even exist, all the while joking about the whole situation with his other friends to appear as unbothered about it as possible.

Eventually they’ll make peace, slowly slide back into their own weird version of semi-antagonistic friendship, and all will be right with the world.

Well. This world. Dex isn’t sure about the other two he’s visited.

“You’re both impossible,” Ford huffs. Dex hefts the costuming in his left arm a little higher up and tries not to drop anything. “Listen, Chowder usually gets him to break by now. Or Lardo does. Or one time Tango accidentally did, though who the hell knows how Tango does anything. But so far, nothing.”

Dex mulls this over for a moment, eyebrows furrowed in confused thought. “What do you mean by ‘break?’”

Ford snorts. It’s probably supposed to be derisive but it’s mostly just cute. “You really think Nursey is ever able to process all his bigger emotions himself? Of course he eventually breaks for someone. Hashes it all out in private, and then, you know, you two go back to doing your thing. I figured you did the same. God knows you’re just as emotionally stunted as he is.”

She’s... not wrong, exactly. Dex definitely doesn’t really deal with his own larger emotions in very healthy ways, particularly when they come to Nursey. Not until Bitty finally forces a rolling pin into his hands and makes him talk to some pie dough about it all.

Somehow it’s easier to speak things out loud if he stares at the floured countertop instead of his captain’s kind eyes.

He didn’t realize Nursey did the same thing, and he’s a little thrown by the revelation. He knew Nursey didn’t deal with this shit well either, but he thought...

Look, Dex knows the aloofness is an act, and often a poor one. But he’s still never been able to picture Derek Nurse opening up to someone enough to actually lean on them for emotional support. Never imagined a scenario where he would have to.

Dex suddenly feels like an idiot.

“But he hasn’t yet?” he asks dumbly, as his brain struggles to catch up to the implications of this conversation. “He hasn’t ‘broken?’”

Ford shakes her head. 

She is less than forthcoming with why that might be, but Dex has got a pretty good idea.

Not that Dex does anything about it. It takes another week and, finally, yes, a rolling pin and some pie crust, to make him pull his head out of his ass entirely.

It also takes another trip to a reality he immediately knows is not his own.

Bitty corners him in the kitchen before he’s fully put down his backpack and shoves a cookbook into his chest.

Bitty, obviously, does not need a cookbook. The only time it comes out is when he wants Dex to work with him, because he knows having the safety net of an instruction manual is something Dex takes comfort in.

There are far too few instruction manuals in life, in Dex’s opinion, and far too many people who take them for granted when they do exist.

“Honey, that pie did nothing to deserve your ire,” Bitty tells him lightly when Dex puts the rolling pin down on a mound of dough a little too hard. 

Dex sighs and stares down at his mess. He sucks in a deep breath and lifts the pin to start again. Lets his next words be what he throws down, instead of any physical objects.

“I think trying to share a room was the final straw. I think we fucked up.”

Bitty huffs somewhere in his periphery, but Dex is careful not to look directly at him. “Wouldn’t be the first time, Sweetheart.”

“Feels like the _last_ time, though.”

Bitty hums, thoughtful. Not dismissive, but simply waiting for when Dex is able to continue. 

Dex focuses on getting the dough in front of him perfectly, evenly flat, and on the sound of Bitty’s whisk. They work in silence for a moment. And, once Dex is satisfied with the crust, he slumps, holding the rolling pin limply down at his side.

“He usually starts messing with me again by now,” he tells the countertop. “Giving me grief directly, instead of through everyone around us. It’s just weird not sitting next to him sometimes, I guess. Even when we fight, even when he’s ignoring me, we sorta always...” Dex shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know. He’s still _there_. He’s still being his annoying self wherever I go. And now he’s not.”

Bitty steps into Dex’s side and gently hip checks him down the counter. He takes the rolling pin from Dex and begins to roll the pie crust around it so that he can then lay it out across the pie plate.

“This sounds awfully like a long-winded way of telling me you miss him.”

“I—” Dex starts, and then stops. Is that what this is? 

As if Bitty can read his mind, he adds, “He’s your friend. Of course you miss him.”

Dex hasn’t had a lot of friends in his life. When he got to Samwell he was amazed to even get the one in Chowder. That alone felt like a minor miracle. And then bonding with Bitty even more so. He didn’t think he’d get to have any more than that, and didn’t think he needed anymore either.

But maybe he had more than that anyway, and never even realized.

***

Dex is ready for it the third time.

He doesn’t actually know when it’s going to happen or how. He’s still powerless here and the fact eats at him. But he knows it’s coming. 

That night he goes to bed with a strange feeling in his gut that he thinks is a warning, but that he refuses to believe means anything until he wakes up back in his old room upstairs.

No, not his room upstairs. The... attic?

Dex blinks blearily at his surroundings to discover that this is true, though he recognizes enough of his stuff that it’s obvious he lives here. He’s in the bottom bunk of Ransom and Holster’s old set up, and there’s a bare arm hanging over the edge of the bunk above him with a familiar tattoo around the bicep.

Dex swallows and gets out of bed quietly. Doesn’t bother throwing on clothes as he makes his way down to the second floor and does a cursory search for clues as to what else might be different.

A lot, as it turns out.

Bitty’s bedroom door is open and that is definitely not Bitty’s desk or bed on the other side of it. Chowder’s door is closed, but the Sharks logo is still on it. The door beside his has caution tape criss-crossed over it and is barely hanging on by its hinges.

Down in the kitchen, some guy Dex has never seen before is eating cereal from out of a giant Tupperware bowl while staring at his phone.

“Uh. Hey,” Dex says uncertainly.

“Yo.” Cereal guy gives a half-hearted salute with his spoon and doesn’t bother looking up. 

Dex feels more wrong-footed than he ever has before. At least the last two times he _knew_ the people around him. “Where’s Chowder?” he tries, as his eyes find the window over the kitchen sink and his heart stutters a little in his chest. There are no curtain.

This place feels... wrong. Not just different. _Wrong_.

“What?” the guy lifts his head, and looks like he’s pretty sure he misheard Dex.

“Oh. Um. There’s a shark on his door?” And now the guy is looking at him like he thinks Dex hit his head, which is never good. 

“Yeah,” he says slowly, and then takes a large bite of his Lucky Charms. “Because Chow told Jonesy he’d tear him a new one if he took it down. Dibs rules, man, Jonesy isn’t gonna break a promise to a bro.”

“...Right.” Dex doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know who Jonesy is or how he could have somehow gotten Chowder’s dibs or why Chowder would have given them to anyone in the first place before graduation.

“Besides, the next time his NHL salaried ass makes his way over for a kegster, we better be on his good side if we wanna see his next cup day.”

 _Oh._ Oh wow. Chowder’s in the NHL? Dex wants to pump his fist in the air and celebrate the pure awesomeness of his best friend, but obviously this is old news to the guy in front of him. He tries to rein in his delight as he asks, “What about Bitty?” 

“Who?”

And just like that, it’s gone. Dex swallows and glances around the kitchen again. It’s not just the lack of curtains that makes this place feel wrong. Everything’s just a touch too grimy, the only things on the countertops are old takeout containers, and the oven is a much worse for wear Betsy 1.0.

Another guy that Dex doesn’t recognize meanders in and heads to the sink, bending down to drink directly from the faucet.

Dex feels like the ground is falling out from under him. There are still touchstones to _his_ reality here, but none of them are big enough, significant enough, for him to hold onto right now. Who even is the Dex that lives here? That is friends and teammates with these strangers?

And then Derek Nurse enters the room, yawning loudly and stretching his arms out so wide that he hits the back of one hand on the crown molding and hisses in pain, shaking it out and trying not to look too sheepish about it.

Dex can suddenly breathe again.

“Nursey,” he says, and he can’t keep the relief out of his voice.

Nursey looks up and blinks at him. But then he smiles, a real smile, even if it’s small. “Dexy, hey. You alright, bro?”

“Yeah,” Dex nods, and then stops and swallows when he realizes he’s being a little too eager. 

Nursey notices, though. Dex watches his eyes narrow a bit, and then his expression evens out as he pretends he doesn’t. Dex has never been more grateful for anything in his life than he is for Nursey then casually moving further into the room under the pretext of starting the coffee maker, and placing himself right next to where Dex stands.

Dex subtly inches a little closer to him, acting like he’s more interested in the coffee grounds Nursey’s scooping into the filter.

Out of the corner of his eyes he thinks he sees Nursey bite back another smile, but this one is different. Private. Not meant for the Haus kitchen, and especially not for whoever these guys are in the kitchen with them.

“Gross, is that your fucking hipster french press shit again, Nurse?” The guy with his head under the faucet straightens and wipes the excess water off his face with the bottom of his shirt.

“Fuck off, Jonesy,” Nursey says, easy as anything, even though the Nursey that Dex knows would get weirdly defensive and secretly embarrassed over any one criticizing his fancy coffee choices.

“Do you even know what a french press is you meathead?” Lucky Charms snorts.

Jonesy scowls and throws the nearest empty styrofoam container at him.

Nursey chuckles and continues starting the coffee pot. He ignores the fact that Dex is still steadily getting closer and closer to him. 

Dex can’t even help it. He doesn’t know how to navigate this place, and doesn’t have any freaking clue what the Dex who could live in it would look like.

Who is a junior year Will Poindexter that never had a Bitty to bake with? That doesn’t have a Chowder to lean on? That lets dilapidated bedroom doors go unfixed?

Dex follows Nursey’s lead throughout the morning. He drinks the coffee Nursey makes, eats the slice of toast Nursey shoves at him, gets dressed in the attic on autopilot while Nursey sings in the shower downstairs, loud enough that Dex can hear it through the floorboards.

They go to practice. The team is practically unrecognizable to Dex, but he and Nursey are still paired together so he focuses on that.

Afterwards, just outside of Faber, as the other guys start heading towards the Haus, Nursey hangs back a bit, and so Dex does the same. 

Nursey seems to have been expecting that, because as soon as the others are out of their line of sight, he tugs Dex around the corner of the building and shoves him up against it.

Dex doesn’t have the wherewithal to do anything about it until Nursey’s lips are a hair’s breadth from his own. At which point his faculties kick in and he shoves at Nursey’s chest with both hands.

Nursey stumbles a little, but doesn’t seem offended. Or all that much caught off guard. In fact, he jumps away from Dex even farther than he was already pushed and starts looking around wildly. “What? Did one of the guys come back?”

“No,” Dex manages, wide-eyed and breathless, his brain stuck in a frenetic loop of _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_. “Uh, no. I just. I thought.” He’s got nothing.

But Nursey’s eyes return to his, and his whole face softens into something so achingly tender that Dex gets a little choked up.

Nursey lifts his hands and places one on the back of Dex’s neck, the other cupping Dex’s cheek. His thumb sweeps back and forth over the freckles there. “It’s okay, Poindexter. They won’t find out. We’ve been careful.”

“Yeah,” Dex gulps. He’s not a good liar, but he doesn’t know how to get out of this otherwise. “Yeah, I know we have. I’m just, uh, you know. Nervous. Worried.”

It doesn’t help that a large part of him wants to stay right here in Nursey’s arms. Wants to wrap his own arms around Nursey in return and just bury himself in the familiar scent and feel and weight of him.

Because what if Dex gets stuck here? The thought’s occurred to him before, but it’s never felt this terrifying. He has no idea what the rules are for this sorta thing, no idea if there even _are_ any rules. What if he wakes up tomorrow morning and he’s still in the bottom bunk of the attic?

What if Derek Nurse is the only part of his actual life that he gets to keep?

Nursey leans in again, slower this time. But Dex is no quicker in stopping him, waiting right up until the kiss is about to happen before he pulls himself together and turns his head away.

Nursey’s lips brush against Dex’s jaw and then pull away. Nursey’s hands fall down to his sides. “Hey,” he says softly. “It’s okay.”

Dex shuts his eyes and nods. “Sorry,” he says. He feels like he’s been saying that to Nursey a lot lately. Just never to the Nursey who probably needs to hear it most.

“Don’t be.” Nursey’s voice is practically a whisper. “I know it sucks now, but maybe next year...”

“Next year?”

“We’ll be seniors, and Toates and Jonesy will be gone, and maybe... I don’t know. It’ll be better. Maybe we can finally stop hiding. At least at the Haus.”

Dex doesn’t open his eyes. He’s not sure he’d be able to take Nursey’s expression right now. Can hardly stand to hear what this reality is like for the two of them. No Bitty. No Bitty and Jack. Hiding from even the people they live with, from their own teammates.

He doesn’t let himself think too much about his next move, just allows his hands to reach out and grab onto Nursey’s shirt, pulling him forward until they’re chest to chest. He wraps his arms around Nursey’s waist and feels a little bit of the heaviness in his heart dissipate when Nursey wraps his own arms around Dex and squeezes.

“It doesn’t matter, okay? You still got me, Will,” Nursey mumbles into Dex’s shoulder. “No matter what, you still got me.”

***

Dex wakes up back in the basement and, once again, does not cry.

_Everything is fine._

He spent the rest of the day after Nursey’s hug surrounding himself with people he was supposed to know but didn’t. It was torture, but it guaranteed Nursey didn’t try to kiss him again.

They got ready for bed in silence that night, sounds of some epic round of Call of Duty muffled from downstairs. Nursey didn’t try anything then either, not even with the door shut and locked. He just took Dex’s hand in his and held it for a moment, watching Dex’s face as though trying to read his mind. He squeezed his hand then, and headed to his own bed.

In this reality, _his_ reality, there will be no hand holding, Dex knows. 

Not that he wants that. The phantom touch of Nursey’s palm against his own lingers, but that doesn’t have to _mean_ anything.

And, in any case, he’d settle for just having Nursey finally start acknowledging his presence again.

Maybe Bitty is right. Maybe Dex misses him.

“Hey,” he says while knocking on Nursey’s open bedroom door that afternoon. Dex has only been upstairs a couple of times since he moved, but hasn’t had a chance yet to see the room itself. 

It looks the same as it did before, just not quite as crowded now that the second desk is gone and the bottom bunk has been converted into a sort of reading nook, complete with fairy lights and milk crate bookshelves.

It reminds him of the single queen bed in the corner of their room in that one universe, and he has to shake his head at the memories that want to come careening back.

Nursey is on the floor, surrounded by various notebooks, pieces of scratch paper, and an open laptop. He looks like he’s trying to solve a cold case rather than just write an essay.

He glances up at Dex’s arrival, and then quickly back down when he realizes who it is. He doesn’t respond. Just grabs a highlighter and starts marking up a text book.

Dex watches him for a long moment. There’s something about Derek Nurse that draws eyes to him. He’s the most watchable person Dex has ever met. A magnet for everyone’s gaze. And the fact that Dex isn’t immune to this fact frustrates him to no end.

But Nursey is gorgeous, and intriguing, and this is just the reality of the universe. Of _every_ universe, as Dex is starting to discover.

He can still feel Nursey’s arms around him from that hug outside Faber. Can still feel how grounding and comforting it was. He wishes he could reach out for him now and find that same feeling in the arms of this Nursey... but they’re not there yet. Probably never will be.

It’s a startlingly depressing thing to realize.

Dex sighs. “Look, I wanted to apologize.”

Nursey finally stops ignoring him at that. “What?” He looks genuinely caught off guard, and it’s rare that Nursey is surprised enough to let it show.

“For how this whole thing went down. The room, I mean. I know I overreacted, and I’m sorry.”

Nursey blinks at him in stunned silence.

Dex shuffles his feet awkwardly. “So... Yeah. That’s all.”

He turns to leave, but stops as Nursey scrambles up to standing. “Wait.”

Dex turns back and they stand there, eyeing each other for a while. “Is this you trying to move back in?” Nursey asks.

“God no. That was a disaster.”

A startled laugh escapes Nursey at that. It’s a good sound to hear, and it’s been far too long since Dex has heard it without a tinge of meanness to it. “To be fair, by a certain point I was totally poking at you on purpose.”

“Oh, I know.”

“But you’re the one that’s sorry?”

Dex shrugs. Somehow this part is easier to say out loud than he was expecting it to be. “I could’ve handled it better. I haven’t survived being friends with you for this long without learning a few tricks on how to deal with your sporadic bouts of assholery.”

He’s expecting tempered disbelief in response, or maybe a chirp about how Dex’s own tendencies towards “assholery” are far less sporadic.

He is not expecting Nursey to go quiet and a little vulnerable around the eyes. Dex might not have even noticed it if he hadn’t already been exposed to such blatant vulnerability from the other versions of Nursey he’s met. But he sees it now, so slight and yet so easily injured.

“Friends, huh?” Nursey asks, wary.

“I didn’t believe it either.” Dex tries to make it a joke, but they both know it’s the truth.

Nursey stares at him. The look is so close to being that Patented Poindexter Microscope that Dex got from another version of Nursey once that he starts to panic a little.

But then Nursey nods and sits back down on the floor, picking his textbook and highlighter back up. “Well, I guess, in that case, I’m sorry too.”

Dex swallows. “Thanks.”

“But I do kinda gotta get back to this.” Nursey motions to the mess of papers around him. 

“Oh yeah, of course. I’ll just...” Dex is immediately the most awkward person on the planet as he tries to make a smooth retreat. “Smooth” is not a word that has ever been applied to him, in any situation.

“You’re cool in the basement, though, right?” Nursey asks, his eyes carefully on his book instead of on Dex.

Dex feels his eyebrows furrow inward. “Yes?”

“It’s not too cold down there? You like it?”

He has to bite back a smile that he tries to tell himself isn’t there. Anyway, Nursey’s still not looking at him so it’s like it never happened. “Yeah, Nurse. I made it up nice. You should come down and check it out some time.”

Nursey nods and doesn’t look back up. But his shoulders relax a little and his grip on the highlighter is suddenly not nearly so tight.

***

Two days later, Nursey sits down next to Dex at team breakfast. 

They don’t talk, really. But Nursey chirps him for eating his oatmeal plain while adding a handful of blueberries to it like he knows Dex secretly likes, and Dex saves a glass of orange juice from spilling everywhere when Nursey tries to reach past it for the salt, and it feels like something has started to heal.

Chowder gives Dex a not entirely subtle thumbs up from across the table.

That afternoon, Ford pulls him aside on his way to the locker room, and punches him lightly in the bicep with a smile. “Lardo texted me.”

“Okay?”

“Nursey called her. They talked.” 

“Oh. Uh, good.” 

Ford laughs a little. “You are still so shit at this, oh my god.”

“In my defense, so is Nursey. It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far.”

Ford shakes her head, but concedes his point with a sigh.

On the ice, he and Nursey skate with each other like they always do. Like they did even when things were at their worst. But it feels better now, like it’s not just their hockey that’s good, it’s them.

On the bench between shifts, Nursey pats him on the helmet a couple times with his glove, and Dex feels himself grin despite the fact that they’re currently down by one. He’s already flushed and out of breath from their time on ice, but it’s possible he goes a little redder then. 

No one would know it if he does.

***

Against all odds, and certainly against his better judgement, Dex starts to get used to it.

Some nights he just... wakes up back in the room with Nursey. Sometimes in the same bed, sometimes not. Always on good terms with him. Often... on a little more than just good terms.

Dex learns to navigate that part of it as well. He ignores the casual intimacies and stealthily distracts from the more meaningful ones. And he gets better at saying things without actually having to say them. 

He’s not going to tell any version of Nursey that he loves him, he refuses to say those three words to someone unless he means them, and anyway he’s not a good enough liar to make them sound convincing if he were to try.

Instead, he responds with, “I got you an extra coffee from Annie’s,” and “Take my jacket already before you freeze to death,” and “God, you’re beautiful.” 

You know, things that are true.

What he doesn’t get used to is how to deal with the Nursey in his own universe.

Something about spending a day holding hands with the guy in another reality leaves Dex pretty fucking flustered when faced with the Nursey in his own. But they’re _friends_ now, and so he tries his best to pull himself together. He doesn’t want to accidentally disrupt the good thing they’ve only just begun to get going.

And it is good, though in small starts and stops. Baby steps. 

They stop taking turns with Chowder’s time, and now hang out all three of them together like they used to. They save a spot at the Haus dinner table for the other, or a controller for a group Mario Kart marathon. They bite their tongues when it’s the other’s turn to pick on movie night.

Oddly, he sees more of Nursey now than he did when they shared the room. But it’s easier. Like they’ve stopped putting so much pressure on the other to be something they aren’t. Like they’ve stopped putting so much pressure on themselves as well.

They study together and play hockey together and, yes, argue constantly, but it’s... nice. And, hopefully, sustainable.

Though sometimes Dex forgets himself. 

“You’re a disaster,” he says as he plucks a leaf from out of Nursey’s hair. They’ve just met up on the quad to walk home after class, and Dex’s tone is far too fond. His fingers linger to brush dew drops from the leaf off of Nursey’s curls.

Nursey stills for a second, and then starts walking down the path with a forced and entirely fake _chill_. “I’m a work of art, Poindexter. I’m one with the trees.”

Dex tries not to blush as he realizes what he just did, and then falls into step beside Nursey. “You’re one with the ground, you mean. I saw you trip into that pile of leaves by the fountain.”

“And yet my cast and my face are both still in one piece. That takes skill.”

“That takes _something_.” Dex rolls his eyes, and stuffs his hands into his coat pockets so that he doesn’t accidentally do anything with them that he _doesn’t do_ with this Nursey. 

It happens more often than he wants to admit.

Sometimes Dex is sitting next to Nursey on the couch for movie night and he leans into him more than he should. Or they’re walking to Annie’s with some of the guys and Dex starts to reach for Nursey’s hand. Or they’re donning their coats and scarves to go outside and Dex pulls Nursey’s hat down onto his head for him, careful to cover the tops of his ears.

Nursey will stare at him for a long moment afterwards each time, long enough that Dex will remember where he his and blush brightly, duck his head and determinedly pretend that nothing happened. 

Nursey doesn’t say anything about it. He pretends he doesn’t notice, but Dex knows that he does.

It’s not like Dex is trying to distract from an unsaid “I love you” with this Nursey, _his_ Nursey. But, all the same, he starts to find himself occasionally offering up “I got you an extra coffee from Annie’s,” and “Take my jacket already before you freeze to death,” and “God, you’re beau—”

He manages to catch himself on that last one. But only just barely.

“Is that Nursey’s shirt?” Bitty asks after dinner while he wipes down the counter tops and Dex does the dishes.

Dex freezes with a plate in his hand on its way to the drying rack. He glances down at the shirt in question, and then curses under his breath. 

It is Nursey’s shirt. He hadn’t even noticed.

He racks his brain for a possible explanation to give Bitty, because the truth is somewhat damning. The truth is, he decided to do Nursey’s laundry for him yesterday because the guy was kind of a mess prepping for a midterm and dealing with the doctor’s office about finally getting his cast removed, and Dex... wanted to help him out. 

Not a big deal, really. Helping a friend isn’t that bad. But it’s not like Dex has ever done anyone else’s laundry for them. And he definitely hasn’t absently put on a shirt that wasn’t his, just because Bitty called him up to help out with dinner while he was in the middle of folding it.

He hadn’t even thought twice when he did it. What the hell.

“Must’ve taken it by mistake when I moved out.” It’s an obvious lie. Nursey wore this shirt just last week. 

Bitty carefully keeps cleaning a counter that is already cleaned, sparing Dex from any judging looks. He keeps his voice neutral as he says, “Nice of him not to say anything about it at dinner.”

Shit. Nursey was there at dinner with them. Of course he must have noticed.

...And he said nothing. Dex doesn’t know what that means.

“Yeah, I guess we’ve gotten better about the fighting. Pick your battles, right?”

Bitty snorts a laugh. “Honey, the day you and Nursey choose not to argue over a grievance is the day I switch jam allegiances. Obviously it just didn’t bother him that much.”

The thing is, Bitty’s not wrong. And Dex has no idea what to do with that information either.

Because despite what some of these other realities have shown Dex, he and Nursey aren’t... _that._ It’s just not how they work. They’re better now, sure, they’re closer, but only in the way that he’s close to any of his teammates. 

The two of them are still miles from being anything more than that, and besides it’s not like Dex would even _want_ them to be. Even if so many days of experiencing the possibility in other universes has left the idea of it percolating in the back of his mind. It takes a lot of effort anymore to convince himself that _this_ version of he and Nursey don’t fit together that way and never will.

Which is fine. He never asked to experience an alternate timeline in which they could be. He’d be perfectly happy just sticking with his own.

Dex changes his shirt as soon as he’s done with the dishes. He finishes folding Nursey’s laundry, and then drops it off upstairs when Nursey is suitably distracted by whatever the guys are watching on tv in the living room.

***

He doesn’t get away with it, of course.

It’s been too many little things all piling up, and he knows it. And he doesn’t have an explanation for it all that doesn’t leave him sounding like a crazy person.

Even in his own head, he’s not sure he’s telling himself the whole truth about why he keeps slipping up and treating Nursey a little differently than everyone else in his life. 

“Ready, Poindexter?” Nursey asks as he gets up from his spot beside Chowder in the library. He starts gathering his things into his bag, and Dex was already half packed up himself, somehow knowing Nursey was about ready to call it quits for the day.

The three of them, along with Bully and Hops, have been doing homework together for the better part of the afternoon, and it’s definitely time Dex cleansed his palate of all that freaking code. He doesn’t know if Nursey is thinking Annie’s or the batch of cookies Bitty texted them about earlier, but both sound fantastic right now.

Chowder starts laughing.

Nursey stops and frowns down at him. Dex does the same. They share a quick glance with each other, and then put eyes back to Chowder.

“It’s nothing, sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t sound sorry. “It’s just funny how much you two are in sync now.”

Hops nods. “Psychically linked.”

Bully shrugs, which is Bully-speak for “I completely agree but am not invested enough to bother with actual words.”

“I mean, it’s great!” Chowder amends quickly. “It’s just that not that long I was convinced you’d never even speak to each other again. And now you guys are practically attached at the hip.” 

Just like that, Dex is abruptly transported back to one of those first realities he visited, when another Chowder had tried to tell him the same thing about he and Nursey. Attached at the hip. He hadn’t been able to comprehend it then, had thought it an impossible thing to consider even for alternate versions of themselves. 

But now here he is. And he realizes that it’s true. 

Part of this has become automatic _because_ of the other realities he’s been visiting. Because the only thing that stays the same about them is that Nursey is always there, in some capacity, and so Dex always searches him out, uses him as a touchstone. 

Unwittingly, he’s started to do it in his own reality too. Being around Nursey has come to feel like the one thing that Dex can depend on. 

Dex swallows roughly as it hits him, the right words for what he’s been feeling and hasn’t been willing to name: Nursey feels like home.

The realization is as much a punch in the gut as the doubt that goes along with it. Would he still feel this way if he’d never experienced those other versions of Nursey? Would he still take the time to pluck a leaf from Nursey’s hair and then let his fingers linger while his heartbeat does the tango against his ribcage?

The answer comes to him faster than he anticipated: Yes.

It’s not just familiarity and muscle memory that has him constantly reaching out for Nursey, looking to Nursey, caring for Nursey... It’s that Dex _wants_ to do it. He likes to do it.

Well shit.

Nursey is staring at him now, and Dex doesn’t know how long he’s been doing that before Dex noticed. It makes Dex blush and fumble his bag a little. 

But he pulls himself together quickly. He ruffles Chowders hair as he walks around him, and tugs the bill of Hops’ hat down to cover the kid’s eyes. “It’s that defensive partner bond. Once we stopped fighting it, we became unstoppable.”

Chowder retaliates by throwing his pencil at Dex. “Oh you still fight plenty. That’s what makes it all the more hilarious.”

Bully snorts a quiet laugh. Hops hands Chowder a new pencil, like the good little Waffle he is.

Nursey is oddly quiet as they walk out of the library. Without discussing it, they both start heading in the direction of the Haus. Bitty’s cookies it is.

But Nursey continues not to say anything for most of the way there, and Dex feels the silence for the uncomfortable kind that it is. He stays quiet himself for fear of what poking that uncomfortableness might bring. And also because he’s too busy trying not to internally freak out over his recent discovery of feelings to analyze any internal freakouts happening around him.

Finally, as they reach the front lawn, Nursey stops and turns on him.

Dex abruptly wants to run as far away from whatever conversation is about to happen. The expression on Nursey’s face is far too determined and even more vulnerable. 

He looks like he’s about to do something brave. 

“I like being your friend,” Nursey says.

The words are unexpected, and should be a good thing. Hell, they’re a huge fucking achievement within the context of where the two of them started their freshman year, and where their stint as roommates left them. But Nursey’s tone is heavy enough that Dex is honestly afraid of what those words are leading up to. 

“I like being your friend, too,” Dex manages, voice thick.

Nursey’s expression shutters minutely. Dex isn’t entirely sure he doesn’t imagine it.

And then Nursey visibly steels himself. “But,” he says, and stops. Swallows. Glances at the LAX bro’s house over Dex’s shoulder, and then back into Dex eyes.

“But,” Dex repeats. He means to make it a question, only it comes out like he’s agreeing to whatever Nursey hasn’t even said yet.

“But why did you do my laundry for me?”

So apparently Nursey is done pretending not to notice. Dex was really hoping to put this off for... well, preferably forever.

“I was trying to be nice?” he tries. “It’s kind of uncharted territory for me. There’s probably a learning curve happening here.”

But Nursey just shakes his head at Dex’s attempt at levity. He looks at Dex head on, as serious as he ever gets. As _real_ as he ever gets. 

He takes a step forward, towards Dex, and there’s something a little frantic behind his eyes. “No, it’s not just being nice. Why did you buy me that mocha yesterday? Why did you have an extra scarf with you on Saturday when we went to Murder Stop and Shop? Why did...” He shakes his head again and his hands clench into fists and unclench. “Why do you keep looking at me like I’m the only person in the room?”

Dex, for lack of a better word, _panics_.

Or, more accurately, he attempts an entire system shut down and failed reboot, during which his face goes red, his eyes go wide, and every nerve ending in his body goes alight with readings of _danger danger danger_.

“We’re friends,” he says, knowing he sounds exactly as flustered as he feels. His cheeks and ears are burning. “I’m being your friend.”

“So... That’s it? It doesn’t mean anything else?”

“No. Of course not.” Dex scoffs. It sounds hollow to his own ears. “What would it mean?”

_That I’ve been pretending to date alternate versions of you in alternate realities for weeks now? That I think I wish I were actually dating you in this one?_

“I just thought maybe...” But Nursey trails off and then looks down and away. 

When he looks back up, there’s still this one final hint of conviction in his narrowed gaze. “Why did you really move out?”

The question catches Dex even more off guard than anything else that’s been said so far. It’s not like he’s been cryptic about his motivations on that decision. He got pissed at himself, and then pissed at Nursey, and then even more pissed at himself. And then he eventually let it all spiral out of control until he couldn’t see straight, each mild grievance feeding off the other exponentially.

Does Nursey think that...

Oh god, Nursey thinks Dex moved out because of _feelings_. He doesn’t just think Dex has a crush or whatever, he thinks Dex is in it _bad._

Which, okay, yeah, Dex is starting to realize that he actually _is_. But he’ll be damned if he lets Nursey find that out. They only just became friends again.

And there’s the kicker. There’s what abates Dex’s fight or flight response and calms his panic. Because he is not going to let his feelings, or Nursey’s potential knowledge of them, or his own freak outs about it all, ruin the friendship they’ve managed to build. 

Nursey feels like home, and Dex doesn’t want to burn the house down.

So he frowns and considers his next words. He wants to speak the truth, but he also wants to salvage this. After a time, he lands on: “Because we weren’t there yet.”

Nursey stares at him for a long time, his expression oddly neutral. Dex has never known him to be able to hide his emotions nearly as well as he likes to think he can, but this time Dex is at a loss as to how to read him.

And then he nods his head, slowly, with a frown. “We weren’t,” he agrees.

The quiet that follows is still heavy, though. Dex shuffles his feet and tries not to read anything into it. 

“And now?” Nursey asks, after a very long bout of the two of them just staring at each other with searching gazes. Like they were both hoping to find the instruction manual for this moment in the other.

Dex shrugs. He can’t exactly tell Nursey that some mornings he wakes up in the same bed as him and he doesn’t exactly hate it. That holding himself back from reaching out to touch him has been getting harder and harder, and sometimes he’s not sure he _wants_ to hold back.

“I like being your friend,” he says again. “We’re there now, I guess, but I also don’t wanna fuck anything up by changing things when we only just got here.”

Nursey seems to deflate at that, and Dex doesn’t know what he just did wrong. 

“Did you _want_ me to move back into the room with you?” he asks, confused.

“I... No.” Nursey shakes his head. But he’s frowning and his shoulders are slumped, even as he says lightly, “Nah, man. We’re doing good the way things are. You’re right. Why change it up now if it’ll probably just end in us killing each other.”

Dex laughs, but its forced. “Right? Just because we’re ‘psychically linked’ now doesn’t mean I don’t still wanna strangle you half the time.”

Nursey doesn’t even force a laugh, just a brittle smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Or fall asleep on me on movie nights.” His gaze searches Dex’s face for a reaction. Like these words are one final test.

But whatever carefully neutral expression Dex is making is not the answer Nursey wanted. He looks away.

“Or that,” Dex agrees, tone hollow. He feels like something is slipping through his fingers too fast for him to grab at it.

Nursey turns and heads into the Haus.

Dex follows, ready to share a few cookies and forget whatever weird moment just happened. Only Nursey goes straight upstairs without a glance towards the kitchen.

***

Nursey’s different after that day, and Dex can’t figure out why. He tries to maintain their new “attached at the hip” normal, but Nursey is lukewarm at best.

It isn’t like when they used to get into their bigger fights, or like it was right after Dex moved out of the room. Nursey isn’t cold towards him, doesn’t ignore him, or make fun of him to their other friends.

He just doesn’t engage. Doesn’t tease. Sits on the other end of the table at team breakfast. 

He’s polite. Sometimes friendly. But not... 

Not the Nursey that Dex secretly calls home.

Dex starts to look forward to the nights he goes to bed and wakes up in a Haus or dorm room that isn’t really his, even if it looks like it is. At least those versions of Nursey still laugh whenever Dex makes a dry remark, smile when Dex pokes his cheek where a dimple will immediately form, throw an arm around Dex’s shoulders as they walk back from class.

Sometimes those Nurseys will also hold his hand. Cup his cheek. Lean in for a kiss that Dex is careful not to let them have, while offering soothing words to make sure no feelings are hurt.

His own Nursey keeps a decided physical distance between them, so that even if Dex were to accidentally try to reach for his hand or help him with his hat, he doesn’t have the opportunity. Nursey sits in the arm chair on movie night instead of the couch. He places Chowder between them on their walk to the library. He comes downstairs from his room already clad in coat, scarf, and hat, rather than don them alongside Dex by the front door.

But it’s not like Dex can bring any of this up, because doing so would only highlight the fact that this is weird for them. And, well, Dex doesn’t exactly try to hold Chowder’s hand or pick leaves from Bitty’s hair.

“Are you okay?” Ford asks him after practice one day.

“Taking on the team therapist role now, too, huh?” Dex teases. But his heart isn’t really into it.

Ford glares at him until he sighs and relents. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine. You seem like you just got broken up with.”

Dex sets his lips into a hard line and tries not to read into the implications of that.

Ford’s eyes go wide. “Oh no. Did you? I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”

“No, it’s not that,” he’s quick to interrupt. “I’m just in a weird place right now. It’ll pass.”

She eyes him, assessing. “Are you sure? Because at first I thought it was just a ‘you and Nursey’ thing, which is par for the course with you two, right? But you’re kinda withdrawing from _everyone_ lately.”

Oh. Dex didn’t even realize it, but she’s right. He’s gone a little quieter, a little more subdued, whether Nursey is around or not. 

Though, truth is, Nursey’s always around. Even when he’s holding himself at a distance, he’s still there. Thankfully.

There, but out of reach.

Dex misses him. And he wishes he knew how to fix whatever it is he broke.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells Ford. “Just me being an emotionally stunted idiot, as usual. Once I figure out how feelings work, I’ll be back to normal.”

She remains skeptical, but doesn’t push.

So Dex starts putting a bit more effort into being a good friend and teammate, especially where Nursey is concerned. It doesn’t seem to have much of an impact, but he keeps at it anyway. He’s nothing if not stubborn.

And if Nursey looks like the world’s about to end when he comes home to find his laundry’s been done... so be it. Dex doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong, but he’ll keep moving forward, he’ll keep _trying_ , until he makes up for it.

***

And then, one night, Dex goes to sleep and wakes up somewhere else.

He isn’t immediately concerned. There have been a couple realities where he woke up somewhere other than the Haus. Once he was still in the dorms, and once he and Nursey were splitting an apartment down the road because Lardo had given her dibs to Ford out of Team Manager solidarity.

This time, however, he’s definitely in a dorm room, just not one he recognizes. It’s a single, and fairly big. He can see some of his stuff around the room, but a lot of it doesn’t really feel like _his_ in a way that gets under his skin but that he can’t put words to. 

When his eyes land on his bag of hockey gear, his heart rate skyrockets. 

Those are the wrong colors.

Dex jumps out of bed and heads to the one window. Outside, the sun is shining brightly down on a campus that Dex has never seen before. 

He rushes to his bag and fishes out his jersey to look for a logo...

The Wolverines. 

_He’s at the University of Michigan?!_

There’s a knock on his door then, startling him, and an unfamiliar voice shouts, “Yo, Poindexter! You decent yet?”

On autopilot he shouts back, “Give me a minute!” And then he makes a dive for his cell phone, thumbing through the contacts in search of the one name that’s always the same, no matter where he ends up. 

Only Nursey’s not in there.

Dex frowns, at first more confused than worried. Maybe Nursey is under a different name? But he can’t find anything that looks even vaguely promising. 

He scans through his most recent calls and texts, but all of them are to names he doesn’t know.

There’s a pounding on the door again. “I swear to god if you make us late to morning skate, I’m telling Rogers it was you who hid all his sticks that one time!”

“Just— Just one more minute!” Dex is getting a little frantic now, but he hurriedly grabs for some clothes out of the closet and dresses, head spinning with possible next steps in how to handle this.

There isn’t time for a complete meltdown, though. Which is maybe a blessing in disguise. Dex grabs his phone and his bag and opens the door to a burly guy whose expression is far more jovial than his earlier yelling would’ve indicated.

“Welcome to the land of the living, Pointy,” he smiles broadly and throws a friendly arm around Dex’s shoulders. “You ready for tonight?”

“Yeah, definitely,” Dex nods, obviously having no clue what he’s agreeing to.

The guy laughs again and then gives Dex a friendly shove forward while he grabs his own bag of hockey gear off the floor. Dex just follows his lead as he starts walking down the hall. “Well, you better be. No way we kick any Samwell ass if our best defenseman is still brooding over his old team.”

Dex tries to force a laugh along with his companion, but he doesn’t manage it. The guy gives him a sidelong, sympathetic look. Like he wasn’t expecting any different. “Yeah, I get it. Don’t worry, bro, we got your back.”

Dex stays silent after that.

They go to morning skate. Dex keeps his head down and doesn’t say much to anyone, which is either the norm in this universe, or everyone is giving him some space today because of the Samwell game tonight. 

He suspects it’s the latter, because the guy he walked here with—Brett, he soon finds out—keeps making silent gestures at their teammates like he’s the go-to Poindexter emotional distress barometer for them all.

Once skate is over, Dex hightails it back to his dorm room and starts scrolling through his contacts again. Still no Nursey. And no Chowder either, oh god what even is this reality? His vision swims, his lungs hurt for how shallow his breaths get. 

He eventually gets himself back under control when he finds Bitty’s name. Thank fuck.

It takes several rings before Bitty picks up, and when he does, it isn’t with his usual southern hospitality, but with a tentative, “...Dex?"

Dex doesn’t care at this point. He’ll take whatever familiarity he can get. “ _Bitty,”_ he says on an exhale, like the name itself is a revelation.

He doesn’t have it in him to feel embarrassed about it. He just wants to hear Bitty’s voice again, and to find out how to get to wherever Bitty is; spend the rest of this completely fucked up day in this completely fucked up universe baking pies and talking about feelings he’d normally be too repressed to talk about.

“Is something wrong?” Bitty asks.

And Dex wants to say “ _yes_ , _everything_ ,” but bites his tongue.

“I’m worried about tonight,” he says instead. It’s a partial truth, but he’s worried about it on so many levels that the giant clusterfuck of anxiety is enough to encompass all of the myriad things he could be worried about.

Bitty sighs. “Oh Honey,” he says, and he sounds so... so _sad_.

“I don’t know what to do,” Dex whispers, because it’s another truth that doesn’t reveal the larger _what the fuck_ that is his current predicament.

“Listen,” Bitty begins, and he’s got his Captain Voice out now, the one that’s simultaneously reassuring and commanding. “I’ve already talked to the boys. No one’s gonna target you. And Nursey...” He trails off, uncharacteristically uncertain when in Team Captain Mode. But he rallies and jumps back in quickly. “Just go out there and play hockey like it’s any other game, alright?”

But it’s not any other game, and that fact is glaringly obvious even before the puck drops.

On the phone with Bitty, Dex wants to ask him how he ended up here at a completely different school, but can’t figure out the words to do so without giving himself away. He thanks Bitty for the pep talk and hangs up. He takes his usual game day nap, and heads to the rink with Brett that evening, because apparently the guy is on Dex duty for the day.

He seems like a good dude. A mixture of Chowder’s joyful optimism and Jack’s steady pragmatism, in the form of a giant forechecker who reads Dex’s moods like he’s an open book. As far as strangers Dex has met in other universes, he’s at least glad he got this one by his side.

“Don’t look now but number 28 has got his eyes on you,” Brett mutters during warmups.

Dex has been careful not to glance over at the other side of the rink, scared of what he’ll see. But he looks now, unable to help himself, to find Nursey glaring daggers at him.

The expression “if looks could kill” doesn’t even do it justice. It’s more like if looks could maim, kill, and then murder all your loved ones for good measure.

The hits are hard all game. Dex isn’t targeted by anyone, just like Bitty told him, but whenever he does go into the boards its with enough force to have him seeing stars. 

Nursey doesn’t go near him though. Nursey wants nothing to do with him, and skates around him like Dex is contagious.

They win. Barely. And even while his teammates are shouting around him, it really doesn’t feel like a win as all he can do is watch Samwell slowly skate off the ice with their heads hung low. 

He can’t see Nursey’s face, who keeps his head pointedly turned away as he leaves. But he can see Chowder’s through the cage of the goalie mask, and the unfiltered disappointment there hurts to witness.

The locker room is buzzing, but everyone gives Dex a wide berth as he slowly goes through the motions of showering and changing. Brett is careful with him, and accurately senses that Dex would rather be left alone.

What Dex actually wants is answers. How did he get here? How did he fuck up _this much_? 

And what if he’s somehow already on the path to doing it in his own reality?

He waits outside the exit the visiting team uses, hidden behind a snow covered tree. The Samwell bus is parked on the opposite side of the parking lot, so maybe if he’s lucky he can catch someone on their own before they join up with any others.

Whiskey and Tango walk past, then the trio of Waffles, and then...

“C,” he says, stepping out from behind the tree and directly in front of Chowder’s path.

Chowder looks genuinely surprised that Dex is even talking to him. But then the surprise fades into a terse uneasiness, like he’s just remembering to be angry at Dex.

Dex is so tired of pulling his punches. He can’t take this anymore. He pulls Chowder around the corner of the building with him, and Chowder must be too stunned by this move to fight back, because he goes willingly but still looks pissed.

“What happened?” Dex asks, when they’re a safe distance from any other Samwell players that might be heading out.

“What? In the game? You won.” His tone is so cold, Dex hardly recognizes it as coming from his best friend.

“No, Chow, why am I in fucking _Michigan?_ ”

Chowder blinks at him, caught off guard. “Because you wanted to be?” he says slowly, uncertain.

“But _why?”_ Dex feels the frantic desperation that’s been building up in him all day start to rise to the surface and bubble over.

Chowder’s concern and confusion now outweigh whatever grudge he was holding, and he steps forward to put a hand on Dex’s shoulder. “Will, what’s going on? Did you hit your head? I know the guys weren’t exactly going easy on you out there, but you always got back up alright.”

“No, my head’s fine. This isn’t... It’s...” Dex exhales and runs a hand down his face. “Chris, I don’t belong here. Not just Michigan, but _here_. This reality, this universe. I don’t know why but for the past couple months... Sometimes I go to sleep at night and I wake up in some other version of my life. And this is the first time I woke up in a version that didn’t include Samwell.”

Chowder studies him critically for a very long moment. “You’re far too literal for all that to be a metaphor.”

“Way too literal,” Dex agrees.

Chowder sucks in a breath. “Wow. Okay then. So you’re bizarro world Dex. Or maybe that title belongs to our Dex here. But jeez, you’ve been hopping all over the multiverse? That’s totally gotta be getting to you.”

Dex sighs, momentarily distracted by the prospect of actually talking about this for the first time. “I mean, I’d stop it if I knew how, but there’ve been times when it wasn’t that ba—“ He cuts himself off, and asks incredulously, “Wait, you believe me?”

Chowder shrugs. “I’m a goalie.”

And Dex remembers Johnson well enough not to argue that point.

“Please tell me what I did,” Dex whispers in earnest. He needs to know. He needs to figure out how to avoid it in his own timeline.

Chowder purses his lips and eyes him. “How do you know it was something _you_ did?”

“Because me overreacting to what Nursey does only goes so far. The only way I’d end up here is if I was the one that fucked up and then overcompensated in reaction to it.”

Chowder’s expression softens and his eyes are sad. “Is that why you did it? Because you were trying to make up for things in entirely the wrong way?”

Dex throws his hands up in the air helplessly. “I don’t know, Chowder. Sounds like me. But I have no idea what happened here.”

“Also how do you know it has to do with Nursey?”

“Because it _always_ has to do with Nursey.”

Chowder _really_ looks sad at that. He sighs. “What happened was that you gay-panicked all the way out of Massachusetts and broke his heart.”

This sounds to Dex right now just as absurd as being “attached at the hip” sounded to Dex from out of that other Chowder’s mouth. “But why would— I would never— And he would never—“

“Alright, it was more complicated than that.” Chowder covers his eyes with one hand for a moment, like it’s taking a physical toll on him to remember this, and then he lets his hand drop back down to his side. “But essentially you guys drunkenly made out at a kegster, and then you... Well, you weren’t great about it the morning after. You said some shitty stuff, and you said it in front of a bunch of the team.”

Well that Dex can believe. Because Dex is an emotionally stunted idiot who didn’t even realize he wanted to be Nursey’s friend, let alone anything more than that, until some mystical whatever sent him universe hopping.

“Did I apologize?” he asks. “Or explain myself, or... anything?”

“I want to believe you were gonna apologize, I really do. But then Nursey said he was moving out of the Haus, and you just had to one-up him and tell us all you were transferring schools, and the both of you are way too pig-headed to back down when you make stupid decelerations like that.”

Dex frowns, and his next question surprises him as much as it seemingly does Chowder, but for some reason it’s the most concerning thing his thoughts are now circling around. “Nursey moved out of the Haus?”

Chowder openly gapes at him. And then his eyes widen and he sucks in a sharp breath. “Oh shit. Oh my god. You actually like him back?”

Dex closes his eyes. This isn’t his reality so what does it even matter, right? Confessions don’t count when said to people that don’t exist. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I like him. A lot.”

Or maybe they do count. Because he suddenly feels like a lead weight that was wrapped around his chest and that he didn’t even know was there has suddenly been cut free. His lungs and heart work unhindered now, their movements no longer constrained and heavy.

Dex has to blink back what are definitely not tears.

Chowder moves into his space and looks like he’s going for a hug, but at the last second settles for a hand on each of Dex’s shoulders and a smile that’s half comforting and half apologetic. “This must be hard for you then. Being in a place where you aren’t together.”

And Dex wants to laugh at that. At how crazy all of this has been but how this is almost the craziest part. This Chowder who hates him, who also believes him, and who thinks that of course Dex and Nursey are together if Dex feels that way.

Of course that’s all it would take.

But Dex isn’t the only one who’s bad at feelings. And he wants to tell Chowder that, but then he remembers. He remembers a Nursey who was brave, and initiated a conversation that Dex never would’ve been able to.

Maybe they’ve all been selling Nursey short on the feelings front. Just because he keeps trying to control them all so much more than the rest of them, hide them more, doesn’t mean he’s unable to process them. 

“Do you think our Dex does too?” Chowder asks. But he looks like he already knows the answer.

“I think,” Dex says, and he is so certain of his next words that it kind of hurts to let them out, “that there is no reality in which William Poindexter doesn’t want to, even if begrudgingly, even if loudly shouting against it, always be near Derek Nurse.”

It feels like operating on himself without anesthesia, but there it is. He’s said it. And he means it. 

Chowder does hug him then and Dex is so grateful for it that he almost cries.

“Are you okay?” Chowder asks.

Dex buries his nose in the collar of Chowder’s shirt and focuses on the scent of fabric softener. “ _I just want it to stop._ ” 

And for a moment he’s not certain if he’s referring to the universe jumping, or his feelings for Nursey, or any of the rest of it. Nursey keeping his distance from him now in his own reality. Nursey hating him in this one. It all sucks and it all needs to go away for a night or two so that Dex can finally unclench.

“I’m still new at this,” Chowder says carefully, his voice a soft thing in the cold air between them. “But have you thought that maybe this is happening to you for a reason?”

Dex pulls away from him. “Well yeah, it sounds like I was an ass to Nursey and moved away out of stupidity and stubbornness.”

“I mean the universe hopping.”

“Oh. I mean. I guess?”

“I don’t know what that might be, but whatever it is, maybe the moment you figure it out and fix whatever this crazy thing is trying to tell you to fix, it’ll stop.”

“...Maybe.”

Chowder glances around, but they’re still alone and out of the line of sight of any Samwell players who might still be leaving the building. “Listen, I have to get back to the bus before Bitty sends out a search party. Are you gonna be alright?”

Dex can only shrug helplessly. “The guys here seem cool. It hasn’t been bad. Just... not Samwell. Not...”

“Not Nursey.” Chowder nods knowingly, and there’s a light in his eyes that wasn’t there for most of their conversation. It looks a little like hope.

“Yeah. Not Nursey.” Dex chews his bottom lip for a moment, and then admits, “This is actually the first universe I’ve been to where I didn’t have a Nursey. I guess I didn’t realize how hard it would be.”

Chowder pulls him in for another quick hug and then starts to turn and head for his bus.

But Dex stops him with a sudden, “Hey wait! I— Can I get your number?”

Chowder frowns. “You don’t have it anymore?”

“Apparently not.” 

He looks momentarily heartbroken, but then he shakes it off and steps forward to put his number into Dex’s phone. “I don’t know if _our_ Dex will actually use it, but I won’t hang up on him if he does. If that makes you feel any better.”

“It does.” A little. Mostly Dex is too miserable to process anything outside of that misery. He feels more alone in this place than he ever does hiding out in his basement bungalow.

He goes to sleep that night in this unfamiliar dorm room still feeling _wrong_ and sad and frustrated and wishing he knew for certain that the falling out of this reality isn’t a possible option in his own. He’s not sure he could live this way for longer than a day. 

And he’s pretty sure the Dex that belongs here feels the same way. 

He _hopes_ that Dex does. Because he wrote a post it and stuck it to his phone with the words: “Chowder promised he’d pick up. APOLOGIZE. And then do everything you can to fix this.” 

***

Dex wakes up back in the basement with a start. Immediately fully conscious and immediately aware of his surroundings, that he’s back where he’s supposed to be.

He bolts out of bed and up the stairs, a man on a mission, until he’s right outside Nursey’s bedroom door. He knocks loudly, and doesn’t stop until a bleary-eyed Nursey is opening it for him while yawning. “What the hell, man?”

Dex doesn’t answer him. He just steps forward and wraps his arms around him in a hug.

Nursey goes stiff for a long time and doesn’t hug him back. 

But he doesn’t push him away either, or say anything, for which Dex is grateful. And, after a time, when Dex still hasn’t let go because he’s not sure what he’s possibly going to say when he does, Nursey raises his hands and gently puts them on Dex’s back.

“It’s okay,” Nursey whispers, even though he obviously has no idea what’s going on.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Dex whispers back.

They stay there for a moment longer, quiet. Then Dex finally pulls back, just enough to look Nursey in the eyes. Nursey’s hands fall to Dex’s waist, and then away to his own sides. Dex’s hands try to remain at Nursey shoulders, but have to fall away as well.

“I’m sorry. Whatever it is I did, I’m sorry. But I still... I like being your friend, Nurse. I meant that. What do I need to do to make you like it again too?”

Nursey slides his hand down his suddenly haggard features. “ _Fuck_ ,” he mutters, barely audible. 

And then he sets his shoulders back and meets Dex’s eyes. “I still like it. I still want to be your friend. I’m the one who’s been the asshole this time. I shouldn’t have assumed...”

Except he was totally correct to assume, and Dex is terrified that him realizing that will do even more damage than what was already done.

Now that he knows what _really_ losing Nursey looks like, he’ll be damned if he ever lets it happen. “You aren’t an asshole. Shit, I’m the one who moved out. I’m the one... I’m the one who keeps fucking up somehow.”

Nursey shakes his head, about to interrupt, but Dex barrels on.

“I just don’t want to end up...” he trails off. He doesn’t want to end up in another state, Nursey out of the Haus, all his friends’ numbers deleted from his phone. He doesn’t want to lose what he’s afraid he’s already started losing. “Listen, moving into the basement is one thing. And I think it was probably for the best. Knowing we each have our own space to retreat to, it kinda... I don’t know, I think having that safety net made it easier to risk getting closer to each other.”

Dex takes a deep breath. “But I don’t want to end up on opposite sides of the country or whatever just because I failed at communicating. _I like being your friend._ Please tell me how to fix whatever got broken.”

Instruction manuals are so sorely undrerrated. 

Nursey takes his time thinking this over. At first he eyes Dex with genuine surprise that he fails at hiding, and then with suspicion. His expression has settled on ‘guarded hope’ when he finally says, “No toolbox necessary, Poindexter. I got this.”

“But—”

“We’re good,” he interrupts. “Alright? It was my own bullshit, I don’t know why I ever even thought that you... Whatever. We’re good.”

Dex can’t help himself. He hugs Nursey again.

Niether of them let go for longer than would be considered platonic. But they have their reasons, and Dex isn’t going to look too closely into any of them.

Things don’t exactly go back to their new normal right away, but they don’t return to their old normal either, and they certainly don’t revert all the way back to the normal of their darker moments.

Nursey is... Less careful with Dex now. Though a bit formal. Reserved while pretending not to be.

He sits next to Dex at movie nights, but several inches apart. He makes room for Dex at the Haus dinner table with an already full plate to his left, but makes studied conversation with whoever is sitting on his right.

Dex tries all the harder to be the kind of friend worthy of Nursey’s attention. He takes note of all the way he used to slip up and step over the line into a place where Nursey thought he was angling for _more_ , but he does his best to make it known that he wants to be here. He can be a good friend. Nursey doesn’t need to keep his distance.

***

It’s unclear what the tipping point is, especially since Dex thought things were maybe getting better, but a week later Bitty shoves a rolling pin and a cookbook at him.

“Am I really that obvious?” he asks quietly when they’re about an hour in. The dough for the crust is chilling in the freezer and Dex is peeling apples over the sink.

Bitty is already pulling the ingredients out for their next pie, and doesn’t pause in the process when he answers. “All I know is that you’re unhappy. You’ve _been_ unhappy, but now you’re trying to pretend like you’re not, which isn’t like you. Honey, everything about you is so straightforward, even when you don’t want to talk about it. So I’m worried.”

Bitty rummages around in the cupboards for a few more moments while Dex collects his thoughts. And then he adds, “Also, Ford told me that Nursey hasn’t broken yet, and since I’m no good at getting _that_ boy to talk, here we are.”

The world needs more instruction manuals, Dex thinks.

And then he thinks, the easiest confessions always happen when directed at a pie in progress.

Then: no. The easiest ones come when his captain is helping him navigate emotions by way of carefully measured teaspoons and cups and sticks of butter.

“I’m in love with him.”

The sentence fills the entire room, the entire Haus, and frees up so much space in Dex’s gut that he probably loses a few pounds. 

“...Ah,” Bitty says after a long silence, during which neither of them move. “Well, that explains it, I suppose.”

“He can’t know.”

“I can assure you that he doesn’t.”

“If he knows, I might lose him entirely.”

“Oh, _Sweetheart_ ,” Bitty sighs. And when he places a hand on Dex’s forearm, Dex is helpless to the pull of turning his head to look into Bitty’s eyes. They are so big and so friendly and so fucking _compassionate_ , right now more than ever. 

What is Dex going to do next year without him?

“I have been telling you both this since your Frog year, so I doubt it will work any better now. But please, just— Dex, just _talk to each other_.”

Dex shakes his head, and sets the apple and the peeler he’s holding down on the counter. “We have. Sort of. And I can’t... I know how this ends. I fuck up and we both suffer for it.”

“Seems like you’re both suffering for it already,” Bitty says, not unkindly. 

His cowlick is in rare form and he’s got flour on his chin. He’s wearing a flannel shirt that Dex knows belongs to Jack. He’s the third best thing to ever happen to Dex. And when Dex suddenly understands what the first best thing is, he can’t believe it took him this long. Took him this many universes. 

“Thanks, Bits,” he says. Because it’s the only thing he’s able to say confidently right now. 

Bitty nods and goes back to concocting a pecan pie that Dex is fairly certain this kitchen produced the pecans for out of thin air.

***

There are still slip ups.

Dex makes Nursey a cup of coffee just the way he likes it before Nursey even makes it down to the kitchen. He carries an extra scarf with him because Nursey always forgets his. He watches Nursey studying when he thinks no one is looking, marveling at the way Nursey can make idly twirling a pen between his fingers look so graceful when he fell out of his chair for no reason not five minutes earlier.

But they aren’t actually “slip ups,” are they? 

They don't happen simply because of his memories of interactions in other realities. They’re because he wants to do them. They’re because his traitorous heart is still angling for _more_ , even as his common sense warns him of the potential consequences.

Nursey ignores it all even more than he did before. He accepts his coffee and his scarves and his lingering looks as though they don’t exist. He’s not a very good actor, and Dex can see the effort he’s putting into doing this as clear as day.

He still hasn’t “broken” and gone to anyone to work through his emotions yet, according to Ford. But Dex has no idea what to do about that. 

***

Dex tells Chowder again.

Now that he’s told one Chowder, it’s been itching at him to tell another. Maybe not his _own,_ but someone he can still trust. Just lay all his cards down to someone who matters, but who isn’t at the center of all this chaos.

Dex finds himself in a reality where things are almost exactly the same, save for the fact that he and Nursey still share the room upstairs. Whiskey isn’t around, and some guy named Theo is, but otherwise it’s similar enough that Dex feels like he can consider this a fairly accurate practice run.

Not that he wants to intentionally fuck with another Dex’s life. If things go south, he’ll make it clear that the Dex who actually belongs here should be spared any grudges or embarrassment.

“I’m not from... _here_ ,” he starts awkwardly, but then the rest just comes spilling out of him as Chowder’s eyes get wider and wider over their paper coffee cups on a remote bench near the pond.

He plans on keeping it brief, but ends up summarizing a fair amount of the different lives he’s gotten glimpses of. Particularly the last, most painful one.

This particular Chowder’s reaction surprises Dex even more than the last one’s did. “This isn’t the first time you’ve told me, is it? Or the first version of me that you’ve told anyway.”

“I... No, it isn’t. Wow, have you always been this scary-perceptive?”

“I had to learn to be, if I was gonna stay best friends with you and Nursey and not keep wanting to tear my hair out.” He smiles as he says it though, fond as ever.

“And you believe me?”

“Of course.”

“So did the other you.”

“I am ‘swawesome no matter the universe.” 

He honestly is, Dex thinks. Thank god for Chowder.

Dex smiles, though it’s a bit watery. It feels safer to let emotions out here then it does in his own world. “Any advice on how to fix this? I feel like I’m spiraling a bit here. And I think I’m gonna end up losing Nursey entirely if I can’t get my shit together and start treating him like he’s just a friend instead of this impossible _more_ that all these other universes keep showing me.”

“Wow. So you’re, like, even more in love with _your_ Nursey than _my_ Dex is with his.”

Dex blinks rapidly and pulls back, nearly dropping his coffee. “ _What_?”

“Oh. Are you not...” Chowder searches his face and frown. “The Dex I know admitted to me that he had a crush on Nursey last semester. He still hasn’t done anything about it, but I think Nursey is starting to finally catch on. I figured... It just sounded like you were in a similar situation?”

“I mean, yeah sorta. And my Nursey has probably already figured it out, honestly. And if I don’t figure out how to back off he’s probably going to just stop talking to me or move out.”

Chowder levels a look at him. “Listen, Will. I’m going to be real with you right now. More so than I probably would be with my own Dex, because I think you need it more than he does.” He sets aside his coffee a hand on either of Dex’s shoulders. “There is no way in hell that Derek Nurse does not like you back.”

Dex ducks his head and mumbles, “Maybe the Nursey here is. But not my... Not... You’re wrong, Chow.”

Chowder sighs and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Then let’s look at it another way. You want all this reality hopping to stop, right?”

“Desperately.”

“And have you considered that maybe this is happening to you for a reason?”

“That’s exactly what the other you said.”

“Other Chowder is very wise. And what could that reason possibly be? What in all of these different lives that you’ve caught a glimpse of has been the common denominator?”

Look, Dex isn’t an idiot. Is he way too emotionally repressed and stubborn to self analyze very often? Yes. But he knows what Chowder is getting at, and of course it’s occurred to him before. How could it not?

Nursey has become Dex’s touchstone. His home. If this magical craziness is trying to tell him anything, it has to do with Derek Nurse.

Chowder nods his head when he can see that Dex has caught up. “Exactly. So _maybe_ you should try telling everything you just told me to _Nursey,_ and the hockey gods who are currently fucking with you will finally lay off.”

***

It’s easier said than done.

Dex hems and haws for several days, trying to find some sort of equilibrium with Nursey that will somehow fix what really is going to take an actual _conversation_ to achieve. 

In the end, it’s Nursey who takes the plunge. Of course it is. Because Nursey remains infinitely braver than Dex, and even though they’re both shit at processing emotions, Nursey definitely, Dex is learning, has the upper hand on him in the subject.

“You gotta quit it, man. I can’t take it anymore.”

Dex freezes, caught red-handed as he places a .7mm black gel ink pen on Nursey’s desk.

He looks up to see Nursey watching him from the open doorway to his room, arms crossed over his chest. His expression is pained.

Dex drops the pen and straightens. “I was just returning—“

“That is a brand new pen and we both know it. I lost the last one somewhere between Faber and the library.”

“Between Faber and Annie’s,” Dex corrects, before he can think better of it.

Nursey groans and puts a hand over his eyes. “How do you even _know_ that?” he mutters. And the uncovers his eyes and meets Dex gaze again. “Bro, I gotta believe you’re not trying to mess with me here, or, like, make fun of me or whatever. But all this little extra shit, it needs to stop.”

There probably couldn’t be a better opening. Dex will explain himself, the truth of it, and also promise to be better. If he’s lucky, Nursey will forgive him and their on-ice game won’t be impacted too much.

If he’s _really_ lucky, Nursey will still be his friend.

“Listen. I need to tell you some things. And it’s going to sound crazy, but please hear me out.”

Nursey stares at him, and Dex can’t read his expression beyond some complicated version of curious and wary.

But then he steps forward and shuts the bedroom door behind him. He moves even further into the room, until he can sit down on the edge of the chair in his bottom bunk reading nook. “Out with it then.”

So Dex tells him. Not... Not everything. But the broad strokes, which still leave him blushing as he admits to how many times he’s woken up to see Nursey’s bare shoulders beside him, and how many times that’s been a comfort rather than an inconvenience.

Nursey interrupts halfway through Dex’s highly condensed summary of the universe in which they were on their first date and Dex had to try to salvage the whole thing without hurting the future of their relationship or giving himself away.

“Stop. Just... Just stop.” Nursey stands up and starts pacing back and forth.

Dex deflates a bit. His shoulders sink and he lowers his head, going as small as his 6 foot 2 inch height will allow. “...You don’t believe me.”

Nursey stops pacing and stands facing the bookshelf on Dex’s left. “I know you too well to think you can lie about this convincingly.”

The silence that follows feels enormous. Dex has no idea what to say, and can tell that Nursey doesn’t want him to continue on the track he was going down. Nursey himself looks like he’s struggling, not with his thoughts, but with how to voice them.

Finally: “Why?”

“ _Why?_ ” Nursey asks again. “Why are you telling me this?”

And nothing but the truth can possibly cross Dex’s lips at this point. “Because I want it to stop already. I don’t want to keep waking up...” He steels himself. “Waking up with a Nursey that _isn’t you_.”

Nursey stares at him, looking like he’s just been struck. 

All Dex can think to do is wring his hands and reiterate, “I want to be your friend. I’m sorry I’ve been overstepping, and I’ll stop but I think I have to tell you or this is gonna go one forever: I hate waking up in these other lives. I don’t want it. I... I don’t want any other version of you. I just want _you_.”

Dex has never considered himself good with words, but something about what he’s just said must be right, must resonate, because the next thing he knows, Nursey is stalking forward and kissing him.

It’s the kind of fireworks that all of their more playful arguments feel like. The kind of longing that all of their unsaid connection on and off the ice ultimately translates to. Nursey kisses him like it’s not simply the start of something, but the next step in whatever journey they’ve both been denying was already happening.

And Dex is so _so_ glad that he never let any other Nursey kiss him before this.

***

The bedroom, for the first time since Dex moved out, is _theirs_ that night. 

Not permanently, though. Dex is fairly certain they’re on the same page with that. They both still need a space that is entirely their own to retreat to when necessary. And they need that not just with each other but with everyone else, with the world at large. 

But they’re apparently both more than happy to meet in the middle as needed.

Derek Nurse naked is not a thing Dex has ever allowed himself to fully appreciate. What with locker room rules and bro codes and all the rest of it. But right now, with the man hovering over him on his lofted bunk, the tops of his curls brushing against the low ceiling, his abdominal muscles flexing as he steadies himself, it is like something out of a dream. 

“I’ve never actually...” Dex begins, but doesn’t need to finish as Nursey just nods absently. Like whatever the end to that sentence was going to be, Nursey’s want for him doesn’t change. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Nursey says, a little breathless. And then he takes Dex in hand, stroking slowly, tracking each movement along with each reaction like he’s trying to memorize a play. 

But then he glances up to meet Dex’s eyes, and he looks... He looks like the hottest thing Dex has ever seen, but also like the most fragile.

“Fuck, I lo—“ Dex says, because he’s been waiting to say it for so long now and he finally feels like it’s true enough to voice.

For _this_ Nursey. Just for him.

Nursey interrupts him, though. “Shh. Stop. You don’t have to—“

“But I _do—_ “

“Will, it’s alright. I’m not asking for anything you’re not willing to give.”

Dex shudders at a particularly deft stoke, while Nursey’s other hand reaches behind and somehow Dex is coming without fully understanding how he got there. Only that he wants this for the rest of his god damn life.

“...I'm gonna blow you,” he says around panting, once he finally feels like a semi-cognizant person again.

Nursey falls over on the bed at that, nearly falling all the way off if Dex weren’t so used to his klutziness that he automatically catches and pulls him back.

Sex with Derek Nurse is simultaneously like being awkwardly naked in front of an underwear model, and like being worshipped by a fanbase you didn’t even know you had. It’s the most intense first time with another guy Dex could have ever imagined, but also the most fun.

If Dex were better with words and with feelings, he’d write a poem about it.

But he knows Nursey’s got him covered.

And as Nursey shudders through the end of his orgasm, Dex licks his lips and rests his chin on the pec closest to Nursey’s tattooed bicep. “I love you,” he says. Finally.

_Finally._

“I love you too,” Nursey breathes, and it’s the same face, the same voice, the same soft sincerity as Dex has heard now dozens of times, but it hits him so much harder and so differently _this_ time. 

They wrap up in each other and it feels like an extension of how they’ve always wrapped up in each other in in different ways. In ways that they both pushed against.

The main difference now is that they _cling_. And they _talk._ And Dex is fairly certain neither of them is gonna bother hiding anything again.

*******

Dex wakes up in the room upstairs, Nursey snoring softly beside him. 

And somehow he _knows_ , beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is _his_ Nursey. That there’s still a bedroom for Dex down in the basement whenever he needs it, and that this room is still all Nursey’s whenever _he_ needs it.

Dex grins at the muted sunrise and slips out of bed. He feels something solidify in his chest as he does so, something that he’s not sure he ever noticed before. Like he’s now firmly rooted to where he is, anchored to _this_ timeline, _this_ Samwell, _this_ life.

In the kitchen, Dex starts breakfast, since Bitty's in Providence at Jack's. And since cooking has become that thing he does, not just when he's trying to work through his more difficult and complicated emotions, but when he's happy too. When he wants to take his good mood and somehow bottle it up to share with the rest of his teammates, the way Bitty is magically able to do through pie.

Nursey enters the kitchen halfway through the process with a yawn and a pleading look at the coffee maker several yards away. 

But of course Dex has already made him his usual cup of coffee. Only, instead of pretending to ignore the act, Nursey grins at him like they’re all in on the same shared secret.

Dex doesn’t need to pretend either. Dex knows.

He won’t have to wake up in any other reality than this one for the foreseeable future. And this one is exactly where he needs and wants to be.


End file.
